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Some Saturn lessons might apply here

Sometimes the simplest of questions are the most profound to answer.

For example: What is the purpose of public education? What is it we want to accomplish through public education?

In 2010 there were 13,809 public school districts with 98,706 K-12 public schools in the United States. These schools contain over 55 million children and about 3.2 million teachers serving their learning needs. The total annual cost to the U.S. taxpayer is nearly $600 billion. Of this total cost, the federal government contributes $57 billion, or about 10 percent; the states contribute $277 billion and the local school districts contribute $260 billion.

In Maury County our K-12 2013-14 school budget is about $83 million for approximately 11,250 students and about 700 teachers out of 1,630 total school board employees. In addition, there is the cost of the debt incurred for borrowing millions of dollars to build new schools and repair old ones that are wearing out.

Currently, Maury County taxpayers are contributing about $9 million per year to retire the county debt, of which the majority is for schools. If this sounds like a significant and costly endeavor, that’s because it is.

The question remains as to whether or not we’re getting what we’re paying for?

As it turns out, the federal government pays about 10 percent of the costs but controls 90 percent of the decision-making in education. The latest federal educational program, Race-to-the-Top, with its new national Common Core State standards, dominates the educational conversation in Tennessee. It has driven the state to advance the federal cause for $500 million pieces of silver.

One of the more controversial federal requirements under Race to the Top is the implementation of a pay-for-performance compensation system for teachers. I would caution our elected state representatives and local school board members to go slow in this process and fully understand what you’re being asked to implement. If you get it wrong, it will be a disaster. If you get it right, our public educational system could soar.

I would venture to say that I am one of only a few people in the state that actually has developed and implemented a pay-for-performance compensation system, which was required under the Saturn Memorandum of Agreement. Under the Saturn agreement, up to 20 percent of the worker’s salary was to be at risk, based upon mutually agreed upon annual performance goals.

If the Saturn organization could meet these “reasonable and reachable” goals, they earned back the at risk portion of their compensation. If it exceeded these goals, the employees earned over and above their normal compensation.

In all cases, between 1990 and 2000 the Saturn team exceeded their goals and earned an extra $4,000 to $10,000 bonus. This bonus was paid to every Saturn team member in equal amounts regardless of position, or level of responsibility. The Saturn compensation system worked to promote organizational cooperation and problem-solving, which in turn improved overall performance in profitability, quality and customer satisfaction. Saturn is proof that a pay-for-performance system can work for organizational success, if you get it right.

A recent 2013 study entitled: “Were all those Standardized Tests for nothing? The Lessons of No Child Left Behind,” by the American Enterprise Institute, concluded that in general No Child Left Behind provided some accountability systems that worked to improve low-performing schools, although it had unrealistic objectives, like 100 percent of the children being proficient in reading and math by 2014.

According to the report, the schools exposed to some NCLB sanctions tended to outperform identical schools that avoided sanctions. Other types of sanctions, like transfers and tutoring, had no effect on the schools’ performance.

The report says that NCLB encouraged a bottom-up approach but actually had a top-down implementation process that didn’t work. The report also says that implementing “value-added” metrics — a system that measures students’ progress, not the students’ test scores — can be tricky because overall it’s less transparent than simple proficient measurements.

Regarding compensation, the report concluded that teacher-level value-added metrics cannot be measured effectively, especially for elementary teachers, because it takes years to see the students’ results pay off in test scores.

The report instead recommends a school-level incentive to avoid this problem and which has proven to be a compensation system that actually changes individual behaviors. Speaking from experience, I agree with these observations, as Saturn team members self-corrected and pulled together to improve the overall organizational performance.

Finally, the report found that rather than summarily firing under-performing teachers based upon test scores and student feedback surveys, a more effective approach would first include the delivery of performance-improving feedback and coaching based on classroom feedback to teachers.

This process can also be confirmed with the Saturn experience. Empowering and coaching teachers to problem-solve will work and the organizational educational performance will improve as a result.

My advice to educational leaders and elected officials is to go slow! Be sure you’re on the right track and build consensus. At Saturn we proved that people have a tendency to support the decisions they are involved with, and it will work for teachers here as well.

After all, the purpose of public education is to educate to the best of our ability, and we need great teachers to do that better.

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